A friend of mine said to me concerning a very famous figure, “I wouldn’t say he’s noble, but he earned the trust of the people“. Now let’s not make guessings as to who that famous figureÂ my friend is referring to, since that would only sway our thoughts from the purpose of this post.

Having said that, however, I have tremendous respect for that figure, so it was natural for the inquisitive part of me to ask, “Why do you say that?“. However, sensing that it would only ruin the dinner we were about to have, I kept it to myself.

Again, that is not my point. The point is, how exactly do we judge whether a certain somebody is noble or not? How can we simply derive to a conclusion, “Oh, he’s not a noble guy” when the major part of that person’s life and contributions is before we are even born, much less to understand the reasons and rationale behind his actions and comments. To make it even worse, not only that we have limited knowledge about that person, we refuse to actually take the time to do some extensive reading beyond what is offered by the today’s electronic media, gathering knowledge to our limited repository. What weigh does our judgement carry then?

I believe that most of us judge other people by their actions. And sometimes, there’s bound to be people who asks us, “Well, you critic him so much. What would you have done were you in his place?” And some of us would simply answer, “Oh, I would do this and that” without even a stint of consideration to how hard executing what we have just said is. Or even worse we would simple say, “That’s why I’m not in his position. He is.”

True, we cannot possibly compare what we would have done were we in somebody’s stead to what that somebody had done. We are not in that somebody’s position of power, and imagining that we are will not put us there, regardless of how many information we have. But the truth is, we are, all of us, is in a position of power of some kind, however big or small, significant or not. Owning a blog that everybody loves to read is a position of power. If we were to critic and judge other people based on their action with regards to their position of power, I think we should ask ourselves first, can we justify our actions with regards to our position of power?

You have great knowledge of the cities of the world. What have you done with it? You have good oratory skills that you can easily convince people with your speeches. What have you done with it? Everybody loves your blog and can’t wait for your next post. What have you done with it? You consistently get more than 40 out of 45 points in exam. What have you done with it? You eat healthily and other people are not. What have you done with it? You have a lot of money. What have you done with it? You have a relatively wide knowledge about computers and tech stuffs. What have you done with it? All these are positions of power, in all of which we are in some position to make certain contributions. Not doing anything is not a contribution. Really ask ourselves. What have we done in our position of power?

And yet, we still go and judge people and so easily say, “No, he’s not noble.“, “Oh, that man abuses his power.“, “What? He’s a racist.” And the list goes on. We look so far that we forget to take a mirror and look at ourselves. Complaining and criticising about people will not do any good if that critic doesn’t reach the person being criticised. And there are times when we just wish people would understand the reason why we do some things but they did not, and how we wish at that time that they don’t easily judge us. Yet, we in our comfort so easily judge people.